He sentenced 'blind sheik' in WTC bomb plot

Tuesday, September 18, 2007


Michael Mukasey, President Bush's nominee for attorney general, is known in Hudson County as the judge who sentenced the "blind sheik" - who lived in Jersey City - to life in prison for being the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman taught at Jersey City mosques and gained respect among Jersey City Muslims for his education, reportedly at a prestigious university in Egypt, and for his ability to recite the Koran from memory.

He is most closely associated with the Journal Square mosque Masjid Al-Salam, where he occasionally was a speaker and other members of the bombing conspiracy worshipped.

According to Washington, D.C.-based Center for Defense Information, Abdel-Rahman is also the spiritual leader of a militant, Osama bin Laden-funded Egyptian group, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, dedicated to violently replacing the Egyptian government with one under Islamic law.

At least one member of the group convicted in the World Trade Center bombing had been implicated in previous attacks. In 1990, El Sayyid Nosair, later convicted as part of the 1993 World Trade Center attacks, was charged with the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Abdel-Rahman, who lived for a time at 115 Fairview Ave., Nosair, and five other 1993 World Trade Center conspirators lived in Jersey City.

N. CLARK JUDD